2nd Sunday of Luke

Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw the city full of idols. ¹⁷So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who met him.

¹⁸Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also were conversing with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be advocating foreign deities,” because he preached Jesus and the resurrection.

¹⁹They took hold of him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is, which you are speaking about? ²⁰For you bring certain strange things to our ears. We want to know therefore what these things mean.” ²¹Now all the Athenians and the strangers living there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

²²Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things. ²³For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription: ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, I announce to you. ²⁴The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands. ²⁵He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath and all things. ²⁶He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwellings, ²⁷that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ²⁸‘For in him we live, move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ ²⁹Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man. ³⁰The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, ³¹because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.”

³²Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, “We want to hear you again concerning this.”

³³Thus Paul went out from among them. ³⁴But certain men joined with him and believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

“As you would like people to do to you, do exactly so to them.

³²“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive back as much. ³⁵But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil. ³⁶“Therefore be merciful, even as your Father is also merciful.